Meredith Monk News

-This season, the eighteen young professional musicians of Ensemble ACJW continue their two-year fellowship program with concerts at Carnegie Hall, The Juilliard School, Skidmore College, National Sawdust, and in community venues throughout New York City. In a particular season highlight, Ensemble ACJW leads a residency in Paris in cooperation with The Edmond de Rothschild Foundations from November 15-20 that will consist of workshops at local Paris schools led by the ACJW fellows as well as concerts at Theatre du Chatelet and Studio Bastille. The residency concert at Theatre du Chatelet on November 18 includes a performance of a work written for the group by Meredith Monk, the recent recipient of the United States National Medal of Arts. On November 19 Ensemble ACJW performs works by Boulez, Michael Jarrell, and Phillippe Leroux at Studio Bastille, conducted by Jean-Christophe Vervoitte, horn player with France's noted Ensemble intercontemporain. Ensemble ACJW then travels to Geneva, Switzerland on November 20 for a performance at the Abbaye de Bonmont.

City College Center for the Arts and Clark Center NYC join together in celebration of The Clark Center for the Performing Arts with a presentation of the acclaimed dance/narrative series From the Horse's Mouth on Thursday, October 1 and Friday October 2 at Aaron Davis Hall. The From the Horse's Mouth production will serve as the culmination of Clark Center NYC's weeklong residency at City College Center for the Arts, made possible, in part, by funding from the CUNY Dance Initiative. Performances of From the Horse's Mouth begin at 7pm. A reception will follow the October 1 performance.

In case you missed today's live-stream of President Barack Obama presenting the 2014 National Medals of Arts, read his full opening remarks from the afternoon ceremony below!

ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble opens its 2015-2016 season with a concert presented by Five Boroughs Music Festival at 7pm tonight, September 11, 2015 at National Opera Center's Scorca Recital Hall.

In a ceremony to be held at the White House today, Thursday, September 10th, President Barack Obama will present the 2015 National Medals of Arts. 

The University Musical Society (UMS) has been selected as one of the 2014 recipients of the National Medal of Arts, announced by the White House today. The award will be presented today, September 10 at 3 pm at the White House.

Today, September 10, 2015 at 3 p.m., President Obama will award the 2014 National Medal of Arts to distinguished recipients in the East Room. The First Lady will also be in attendance. Among those honored will be theatre director Ping Chong, Hollywood actress Sally Fields and writer Stephen King. Scroll down for the full list!

The University Musical Society (UMS) has been selected as one of the 2014 recipients of the National Medal of Arts, announced by the White House today. The award will be presented on Thursday, September 10 at 3 pm at the White House.

Next Thursday, September 10, 2015 at 3 p.m., President Obama will award the 2014 National Medal of Arts to distinguished recipients in the East Room. The First Lady will also be in attendance. Among those honored will be theatre director Ping Chong, Hollywood actress Sally Fields and writer Stephen King. Scroll down for the full list!

ACME, the American Contemporary Music Ensemble opens its 2015-2016 season with a concert presented by Five Boroughs Music Festival at 7pm on Friday, September 11, 2015 at National Opera Center's Scorca Recital Hall. The program features music by ACME members Timo Andres (solo piano piece TBA), Caleb Burhans (Jahrzeit for string quartet), and Pulitzer Prize winner Caroline Shaw (Gustave Le Grey), as well as Meredith Monk's rarely performed string quartet Stringsongs and Charles Ives' Piano Trio, Op. 86. The group will also present the world premiere of 5×5, a suite of five movements commissioned by Five Boroughs Music Festival, featuring musical contributions by each of the five composer-performers on the program - Shaw, Andres, and Burhans plus violinist Ben Russell and cellist/ACME artistic director Clarice Jensen. ACME players for this concert are Caroline Shaw and Ben Russell, violins; Caleb Burhans and Caitlin Lynch, violas; Clarice Jensen, cello; and Timo Andres, piano.

ODC Theater, one of the West Coast's major centers for contemporary dance and performance, announced today its newest class of resident artists: Gerald Casel, Maurya Kerr, Nicole Klaymoon, and the duo of Sheldon B. Smith and Lisa Wymore. The announcement of these five distinguished artists falls on the ten-year anniversary of ODC Dance Commons, whose upstairs Studio B will serve as venue for a one-night-only event offering a rare and candid look into the creative process of the new resident artists. Titled Resident Artists Unplugged, the event takes place Sunday, August 30 at 6pm.

On February 12, 1915, the Abrons Arts Center's Henry Street Settlement Playhouse opened its doors on the Lower East Side. Since that day, it has remained a vital cultural resource, providing audiences with artistically bold work while offering artists opportunities to dynamically grow. Since becoming Abrons Director in 2006, Jay Wegman has done much more than maintain 'one of the last standing locations for avant-garde performance downtown' (The New York Times, 2009). He has created an arts venue that is unique on the city's cultural landscape, presenting an international mix of cutting-edge performing and visual artists, both established and emerging, from across the country and around the world, as well as from New York City.

The New York Dance and Performance Awards (The Bessies), New York City's premier dance awards honoring outstanding creative work in the field, today announced the nominees for the 2014-15 season at its annual press conference. The 37 nominees were selected by the Bessies Selection Committee, an independent committee of 39 dance industry professionals. Produced in partnership with Dance/NYC, Bessie Award categories include Outstanding Production, Outstanding Revival, Outstanding Performer, Outstanding Music Composition or Sound Design, and Outstanding Visual Design. The list of nominations follows. 

For the first time in two decades, The Kitchen will present a new edition of the acclaimed performance series And That's How the Rent Gets Paid, written by downtown legends Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez. For three nights only (tonight, July 14, through July 16), Weiss and Martinez's thrilling serial drama, which follows a charming serial killer through the queer underbelly of New York City, will be brought to life by director and producer Brooke O'Harra with Kate Valk and Nicky Paraiso. The three-day marathon performance features an eclectic group of 50 performers including David Cale, Jennifer Miller, Keith McDermott, Becca Blackwell, Jess Barbagallo, Moe Angelos and Mark Bennett, among others. Weiss will appear in the production, in various cameo performances, throughout the three-day run.

Using Richard Brautigan's novella In Watermelon Sugar as a guide and the lens through which material is developed, director/choreographer Steven Reker collaborates with Ryan Seaton, Matt Evans, and Eliot Krimsky to form the experimental noise rock band Open House. At The Kitchen, Open House will premiere an evening of songs, compositions and performance work, this week, June 25-27.

For the first time in two decades, The Kitchen will present a new edition of the acclaimed performance series And That's How the Rent Gets Paid, written by downtown legends Jeff Weiss and Richard C. Martinez. For three nights only (July 14-16), Weiss and Martinez's thrilling serial drama, which follows a charming serial killer through the queer underbelly of New York City, will be brought to life by director and producer Brooke O'Harra with Kate Valk and Nicky Paraiso. The three-day marathon performance features an eclectic group of 50 performers including David Cale, Jennifer Miller, Keith McDermott, Becca Blackwell, Jess Barbagallo, Moe Angelos and Mark Bennett, among others. Weiss will appear in the production, in various cameo performances, throughout the three-day run.

Ensemble ACJW, an inspirational collective of young professional musicians, performs a program of classical and contemporary works at the Greenwich Village club SubCulture tonight, June 12 at 7:30 p.m.

On the occasion of his 50th birthday (6.13.15), the Austrian Cultural Forum New York presents an unprecedented overview of composer/percussionist Lukas Ligeti's work as a composer including new pieces written specifically for the occasion.

The five-time Grammy Award-winning San Francisco Girls Chorus will conclude its 2014-2015 season with an ambitious and ingenious program exploring the serious fun of modern and contemporary music Today, June 5, at 8 pm at the San Francisco Conservatory of Music, Artistic Director Lisa Bielawa has announced. Conducted by SFGC Music Director Valérie Sainte-Agathe and featuring guest composer/violinist Carla Kihlstedt, the program includes a new work by Kihlstedt and her Hold my own with the composer as soloist, John Cage's iconic Living Room Music, Meredith Monk's Panda Chant, selections from Lou Harrison's Mass for Saint Cecilia's Day, Einojuhani Rautavaara's Viatonten Valsi and John Adams' Desert Chorus—both with Kihlstedt on violin, William Schuman's Requiescat and To Thy Love, Lisa Bielawa's Opening: Forest from the opera Vireo and The Andrews Sisters' “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” and “Beat Me Daddy”. The concert's repertoire will be performed by the Girls Chorus on tour in Estonia, Finland and Sweden in June.